Vietnam PM orders drastic action to ensure power supplies

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has requested urgent measures to ensure power supplies during the upcoming dry season and beyond.

In a dispatch, he emphasized that the severe heat and impacts of the El Nino phenomenon have led to a surge in power demand, coupled with drought in the country causing extremely low water levels in hydropower reservoirs, thus affecting the electricity supplies.

The PM asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) to review and evaluate current power supplies and emerging factors that could affect them to strengthen the efficiency and enforcement of state management in the sector, and to promptly guide state utility Vietnam Electricity (EVN) to work on scenarios to effectively deal with electricity shortages. The work must be completed by June 10, he stated.

The MoIT was instructed to finalize a PM directive on methods to save power in the 2023-2025 period and the following years and submit it to the government leader by June 8.

The ministry was asked to follow a PM decree on ensuring power supplies and supplies of coal and gas for electricity production and submit it to him by June 15.

He assigned the MoIT to form an inspection team to examine power supply management at EVN from January 2021 to June 1, 2023.

In his dispatch, the PM asked the ministry to instruct EVN to accelerate negotiating purchasing prices with the investors of transitional solar and wind power projects for completion this month. Transitional projects are those that missed out on the government's preferential feed-in-tariffs (FiTs).

He also asked the ministry to review legal regulations to issue guidance on investment in the national grid in accordance with approved electricity development planning, with a focus on investment under the form of public-private partnerships, and submit a plan to realize the country’s newly-approved Power Development Plan for the 2021-2030 period, or PDP VIII.

He requested the ministry to take over management of the National Load Dispatch Center from EVN this June.

Chinh asked the Committee for Management of State Capital at Enterprises, EVN, Petrovietnam, and mining group Vinacomin, within their remit, to work with each other to ensure power supplies this dry season and in following years, and report to him any issues beyond their authority.

The PM added that EVN should focus on scenarios to respond to power shortages and roll out power-saving measures, especially in June. Petrovietnam and Vinacomin were tasked with ensuring an adequate supply of coal and gas for EVN's power plants.